The Washington Postreports that
Republicans are planning a renewed push to gut laws that protect the
environment and workers, ostensibly in an effort to create jobs:

House Republicans are planning
votes for almost every week this fall in an effort to repeal environmental and
labor requirements on business that they say have hampered job
growth.

With President Obama and his
Republican challengers in the 2012 campaign focusing on ways to spur economic
growth, House Republicans will roll out plans today to fight regulations from
the National Labor Relations Board, pollution rules handed down by the
Environmental Protection Agency and regulations that affect health plans for
small businesses. In addition, the lawmakers plan to urge a 20 percent tax deduction
for small businesses.

According
to Republicans, businesses aren't hiring because of excessive taxes and regulations.
If that's the case, we'd expect to find indications that businesses would like
to hire additional workers to meet demand, but can't do so because onerous
regulations and a crushing tax burden leaves them penniless.

Corporate
America racked up big profits in the first half of the year even as economic
growth slowed to a crawl. [...] Corporate profits rose an estimated 3% in the second
quarter from the first, better than the 1% improvement in the first three
months of the year, the Commerce Department said Friday. Profits were up more
than 8% from last year's second quarter. The domestic nonfinancial sector drove
most of the growth, as financial profits declined.

If corporate profits are doing so well, the GOP suggestion that firms would like
to hire but can't do so because all their money goes to taxes and complying
with regulations can't be right. What, then, is the problem? A lack of demand:

Forecasting firm Macroeconomic
Advisers, which sees growth at a 2.3% pace in the second half of this year and
2.8% in 2012, expects firms to keep banking strong profits. But even if businesses
remain strong enough to make it through a slowdown, they may have to wait longer for a burst in demand strong enough to
propel hiring.

"The biggest problem is
that their order books are thin," said Macroeconomic Advisers chairman
Joel Prakken. "They need fat order books to add people. They need fat
order books to buy machines."

Among
the examples the Journal cites:

Packaging and label maker Avery
Dennison Corp. already cut its profit outlook for the full year after sales
took a downward turn. In the first quarter, the company's organic sales grew
but they fell 2% in the second quarter. "That's a fairly severe
drop," chief executive Dean Scarborough said. "We're definitely
seeing a shift in sentiment."

Avery Dennison is closely tied
to consumer spending. Its clients-retailers and label printers-need less of its
goods when consumers clamp down on spending. Its outlook for profits changed
after the Pasadena, Calif., company noticed customers reducing inventory and
being more cautious, said Mr. Scarborough. "For us, this looks a lot like
2008, prior to the financial crisis."

It
doesn't get much clearer than that: Companies aren't hiring because consumers
aren't buying. But Republicans oppose policies that could put money in
consumers' pockets, thereby increasing demand. Instead, they want to throw tax
cuts and other favors at corporations that already have plenty — but that see
no reason to hire until their customers have money to spend.
It's almost as if Republicans don't care about fixing the economy, they just
want to use the crisis as an opportunity to pursue their ideological goals and
gut environmental and labor regulations.

None of
this is new, of course. It's been clear
for quite some time that companies aren't hiring because of a lack
of demand, and that the basic Republican approach to the economy is wrong.
It is, however, a reminder of a neat trick conservatives have pulled off over
the past few decades: They successfully portray liberals as soft-headed Ivory
Tower intellectuals obsessed with abstract and nonsensical theories, in
contrast to practical, common-sense conservatives who understand how the world
really works.

This is
completely backward when it comes to economics, among other subjects: It is
conservatives who consistently peddle implausible fantasies about tax cuts
always leading to increased revenue; who, when faced with clear evidence that
corporations are profitable but aren't hiring due to lack of demand, produce
elaborate theories that the real problem is over-taxation (though taxes are low
by both historical and global standards) and "uncertainty" and excessive
regulations (though those regulations haven't prevented soaring profits.). It
is the conservatives who pick up the Wall Street Journal, see
companies clearly saying that what they need is more spending from their
customers, and conclude that the real solution is to gut the Clean Air Act.

They
are wrong, certainly, but the way in which they are wrong is
striking: They are guilty of the very slavish devotion to abstract and
discredited ideology they accuse liberals of practicing.